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This video encompasses 2 ½ days of work with one of my most talented students, young (22) Canadian Ben Silverman. Ben is currently playing the NGA (formerly Hooters) tour, and is doing nicely. He has won multiple times already on a lesser mini-tour known as the Minor League Tour in South Florida, and is doing nicely on the NGA. His last tournament was a struggle as he made the cut and finished in the top 25 but was reduced to hitting sizable draws and felt incapable of effectively working the ball left to right. I was not surprised to hear this as Ben’s swing pattern since I first met him last Fall has been to drop his hands straight down in transition while flattening his left wrist, then releasing his arms off his body and out to the right in the impact area. This was a pattern that was taught to Ben (I’m not sure what was natural when he started playing at 14) and he is a hard worker so it is fairly engrained and a hard thing to change.
My focus with Ben is to do different things to help with a general rerouting of his swing path, get his right arm more in front of him, and allow him to release more around his body to the left so that he can work the ball both right to left and left to right using his body alignment and clubface angle. Over the 3 days I use various drills, swing aids and hands on teaching to help Ben feel what is almost an opposite direction of movement with the hands moving out, the left wrist staying cupped, and the right arm moving in front of the rib cage where the body can carry it around to the left in the release area. I am not as concerned about the general nature of the hand release as you see it in Byron Nelson and Vijay Singh to name a couple, but I do believe that if we can get the swing shape to be more out and left that he will be a more consistent and versatile player.
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